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Syllabus

Course Overview

Visualizing data is a key step in understanding many problems. This course is designed to introduce students to methods of visualizing many different types of data, such as images, 3D surfaces, flow fields, and medical data. We will both use existing visualization software and program custom visualizations using C++ and OpenGL. Course activities include discussion of recent and classic research papers, weekly homework assignments, in-class critiques of visualization artifacts, and a final project to explore creative uses of these techniques.

What you should know before taking Interactive Visualization

CSCI 1200 Data Structures and CSCI 2300 Intro to Algorithms or CSCI 2600 Principles of Software or permission of instructor. Everyone in this course should have taken courses in, or have reasonable exposure to, basic calculus, linear algebra (vectors & matrices), data structures, and algorithms. C++ and sufficient prior programming experience is required.

Learning Outcomes

Students in this course (either CSCI 4550 or CSCI 6550) will:

  • Analyze, interpret, and evaluate specific visualizations and discuss how the visualizations might be improved for more accurate interpretation or communication of patterns in the data.

  • Select and design effective visualization strategies for a variety of different types of data.

  • Create visualizations of new datasets using available open-source visualization resources.

  • Use visualization to communicate results of experiments and research in their field of study.

  • Incorporate visualization for debugging and improved program development or experimental data analysis in their field of study.

  • Propose and carry out a creative and relevant term project. They will also write a report and present their own work to their peers.

Additionally, students registered for the graduate section (CSCI 6550) will:

  • Identify possible interdisciplinary connections and synergies between academic papers in visualization and research within other subfields of computer science or outside of computer science in other academic fields.

  • Prepare their final project report for submission to a relevant conference or journal.

Textbook & References

There is no required textbook for the class. We will be reading research papers (available online through ACM & IEEE digital libraries), SIGGRAPH course notes, and other online reference material.